Vitamin D: The crucial sunshine vitamin
Winter is almost over (hopefully), the sun is nearly ready to get out. I am not gonna talk about the sun, but the Vitamin D exactly, this crucial vitamin only available in sun ray.
WHAT WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND ?
Vitamin D is a group of the vitamin found in sunlight that helps to absorb the calcium in our body and keeps bones, teeth and muscles healthy. — It is possible to find vitamin D in Mushroom and fungi (called vitamin D2), but it has been shown not as efficient and beneficial for our health than the one from the sunlight (Vitamin D3). -
The exposure of our skin under the sun creates vitamin D. Ultraviolet B penetrate into our skin and get transformed natirally into vitamin D. So as we can understand everything happens in our skin once we get some sun.
The problem? We won’t all leave in areas where the sunlight is strong enough to create vitamin D all year around. Therefore, mostly everyone living in the northern hemisphere is vitamin D deficiency. In countries like the UK, we can get all the vitamin D we need from April to September, meanwhile during winter time, sunlight doesn’t contain enough UVB radiation to make vitamin D. This si why we have to rely on supplements.
WHAT VITAMIN D DOES?
Vitamin D helps our body to develop strong and healthy bones and teeth. It helps to absorb calcium in our body which lead to strengthening our bones, helps to build and maintain muscle strength and vital for bone development and growth.
Most of the vitamin D is used to absorb and regulate the calcium in our body. The remaining part is used for boosting our immune system by reducing the chance to catch any virus and reduce inflammation.
VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY
A vitamin D deficiency can lead to serious illness such as :
- Infection
- Osteomalacia
- Cancer
- Heart disease
- Depression
- Constant Tiredness
- Weigh gain
- Bone and joint pain
THE CAUSE OF A VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY
The main reason why we are vitamin D deficiency is the lack of sun, but some of us are mostly more sensitive to be vitamin D deficiency.
High-risk people being vitamin D deficiency are those who :
- Spend most of time indoors
- Not getting enough sun
- Darker skin (need to spend more time in the sun to produce the same amount of vitamin D than people with lighter skin)
- Overweight and obese ( Studies show that the fat under the skin may hold onto the vitamin instead of releasing it)
- Elderly (Ageing affect our ability to make vitamin D in the skin that is why it is crucial that elder is going out, take some sun).
- Children
+ Sunscreen has been shown to be such a dilemma in this case too. We all have habits to recover all our body of sunscreens as soon as we see the sun. Here are the problem sunscreens block the penetration of UVB in the skin. Therefore, it reduces of 99% our ability to make vitamin D. Don’t take me wrong on this, it does not mean we should always be under sunlight without any protection, but only 15 minutes is necessary to create enough vitamin D (30 for the elder or darker skin). So yes we need this 15 minutes of unprotected skin under the sun and after protection required of course.
SUPPLEMENT
Vitamin D supplements are therefore recommended for people at higher latitudes during the winter and all years for those are not getting enough midday sun.
The optimum intake is on average 2,000 IU vitamin D3 each day.
+ Last (but not the least), Sunbeds are not the best option to get loaded with vitamin D. They are ineffective in this case (and dangerous). They mostly emit only UVA which increases the risk of skin cancer without producing any vitamin.
So get yourself loaded with sunlight, (or supplement if the sun is still not there). Sun is the best therapy we all know that.
